As for accomplishments, I just did what I had to do as things came along.

If many of our young people have lost the excitement of the early settlers, who had a country to explore and develop, it is because no one remembers to tell them that the world has never been so challenging, so exciting... Perhaps the older generation is often to blame with its cautious warning: “Take a job that will give you security, not adventure.” But I say to the young: “Do not stop thinking of life as an adventure. You have no security unless you can live bravely, excitingly, and imaginatively; unless you can choose a challenge instead of a competence.

Unused ability, like unused muscles, will atrophy.

Probably the happiest period in life most frequently is in middle age, when the eager passions of youth are cooled, and the infirmities of age not yet begun; as we see that the shadows, which are at morning and evening so large, almost entirely disappear at midday.

The purpose of life afterall is to live it.

To be mature you have to realize what you value most... Not to arrive at a clear understanding of one's own values is a tragic waste. You have missed the whole point of what life is for.

No human being can ever "own" another, whether in friendship, love, marriage or parenthood. Many human relationships have been ruined and happiness far too often changed to misery by a failure to understand this.